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You Get The Team You Deserve

I understood when the Patriots gave Oakland a late round pick for Randy Moss a few years ago. It made perfect sense, he was all the team was really missing at that point. They had possession, short route receivers and 57 varieties of tight ends. Yet they lacked that dominant down-field threat to strike fear into opposing secondaries. Moss gave them that. It was a no-risk proposition and it mostly worked. 19-0 18-1 anyone?

But now the Patriots have traded for the loud-mouthed, passive aggressive Ocho Cinco or Chad Eight Five, however you say it. Eight Five posted some nice numbers over the years, but was never part of consistent, winning team. Of course, one can’t blame the Cincinnati Bengals’ failures on a single wide out but I’d be hard pressed to say that Eight Five was ever the solution.

Mix in perennially dissatisfied Albert Haynesworth and you have a volatile “solution” in the Kraft works. No doubt about it, Hayesworth is a monster of a defensive tackle. When he chooses to be. But will he choose to play for Bill Belichick? Could he be a disruptive force on the defense? (See what I did there?)

Both Eight Five and Haynesworth were aquired on the cheap so the experiment is low risk in the end – just cut them if they don’t pan.

We’ll see what happens. Can’t wait for that mid-November game when Eight Five has finally had enough of not getting enough. Will he simply go through the motions and be relegated to 3rd down, 5 WR sets? Could he ever accept such a slight? And what about the first time Haynesworth waives at a running back on the goal line?